Insomnia is tiring

I have never really had any trouble sleeping. I usually go to bed and within a little while I fall sound asleep, much to my wife’s dismay, and the world around me disappears.

I have also been known to be an extremely deep sleeper. My memories are full of moments where my parents, grandparents or my spouse would have to yell at me to turn off my alarm and get up, because frankly I am the Snooze Button Master, with an ability to hit the snooze without ever actually waking.

Since the advent of smartphones and plethora of apps available on, I started training myself to no longer sleep through an alarm. Utilizing the latest and greatest application, aptly named Alarm Clock Xtreme, or something similar, I started to subject myself to a barrage of math questions that have to be answered correctly for me to snooze the alarm. Further, the application also has settings that allows users the option to shorten each snooze cycle, until the alarm goes off repeatedly without pause.

This training to overcome my love for deep sleep seems to have gone too far. Lately I have had some really weird sleep patterns.

I feel like I need to add an addendum here. I grew up in a household that never wasted daylight. If I slept past 8 a.m. during the summer or winter, I had better be on my deathbed.

However, somewhere along the line I bought into the expression “early to bed, early to rise,” and so began this ritual of going to bed early enough to preserve an eight-hour sleep schedule based on the time I woke up in the morning.

This meant that in an average workweek, when I would wake up at 5 a.m., I would go to bed around 9 p.m. to allow myself the approximate full night’s sleep. Now, if I didn’t have to get up, I would stay up later, and obviously if I got up early I would adjust the other direction.

Maybe some of this is normal, but based on the comments I have heard from friends over the years, I am guessing it isn’t.

This method worked pretty well, except for making it virtually impossible for me to stay up past 11 p.m. on most nights without copious amounts of Coke, Mountain Dew or coffee, but I digress.

The problem I have faced since the coronavirus pandemic has hit is that I find myself waking up at the ridiculously early hours between 1:30 and 3:30 a.m. at least half the week. This isn’t something I can adjust my bed time to, so instead I feel like I am operating with half of a brain, which frankly leaves me dangerously depleted.

Is this some sudden sign of old age? Am I destined to operate on only a few hours of sleep?

As if dealing with three of my four children home with me 24-7, learning how to stay motivated working throughout the day, and trying to wade through real and erroneous coronavirus information isn’t enough, I have to run around with half a brain because of sleep deprivation?

*Please note, the majority of this column was written at 1:30 a.m. as the writer wished for sleep.

— Scott Nunn, aka Snooze Button Master, is the assistant editor of the Huron Daily Tribune. He can be reached at 989-245-7140 or scott.nunn@hearstnp.com.